RESTAURANTS : SEA CHANGE : Hungry Diners Seeking Asylum Will Find Comfort in the Arms of Cafe Morpheus

Two years ago, Asylum’s gorgeous interior quickly became one of the most famous restaurant sights in town: a two-story-high room bathed in golden light with huge, facing mirrors on undulating, upward-curving walls. Vast, whoppingly stylish and a little bit edgy, it drew celebrities like a Venus flytrap.

Robertson Boulevard may not be the obvious site for a drop-dead cuisine palace, though, and a recession couldn’t have been the best time to start a project on this scale. Late last year, Asylum’s owners announced that they were metamorphosing the swanky restaurant into Cafe Morpheus Bistro and Bakery.

The bakery sells breads and pastries (and periodicals) just inside the white-tiled entrance, which gives a convincing impression of a Parisian subway passage. The casual bistro element is served, to some degree, by the new bar--seemingly in competition with the handsome original bar, up a flight of stairs at the opposite end of the room--and a new window on the kitchen. The booths are on a slightly higher level, and the dining room, with sensuous floral chandeliers, has a more Art Nouveau flair now.

And whereas Asylum’s menu was madly eclectic and vaguely Pacific Rim, Cafe Morpheus has a pretty steady focus on the Mediterranean, with occasional citations of American vernacular cuisine and just one eclectic extravaganza, a salad of charred ahi on Asian greens with shiitake mushrooms and a quasi-Moroccan vinaigrette. Chef Kim Muller is cooking large portions of heartier food, some of it browned to the max.

I’m thinking of suppli al telefono , one of the best appetizers. These traditional deep-fried balls of risotto, with a mozzarella and prosciutto filling that inevitably produces melty strings--”telephone wires”--as you eat it, look like little brown sausages and smell appetizingly of browned rice. An entree known as “half rotisserie Petaluma chicken” approaches mahogany in hue, and the French fries on the side are moderately brown themselves.

If you avoid a dull soupe au pistou , the best of the appetizers are on the French side. But even the Italian appetizers have French touches--the Provencal olive spread tapenade in a standard antipasto plate, the rich brioche toast used in the bruschetta .

Slices of dill-cured salmon enfold a mass of rye bread and julienned cucumber for the sort of appetizer you’d find at the old Fennel. A wonderful slug of rich, tangy goat cheese comes on a salad in spicy tomato vinaigrette. In fact, all the salads are good--the light, lemony Caesar, the delicate Scarborough Gardens field greens in Dijon vinaigrette and the frisee with apple-smoked bacon, goat cheese and (pleasantly chewy) pear slices in hazelnut vinaigrette.

The short pasta list includes an aggressively spicy version of penne alla arrabiata and a delicate dish of rigatoni with wild mushrooms in a tomato-cream sauce. The ricotta-and-ground-walnut ravioli in butter with fresh sage have real elegance.

Most entrees, by contrast, stress the no-nonsense appeal of French bistro cooking. Pan-roasted medallions of veal come with a wild-mushroom ragout that could pass as a socko red wine sauce that happened to have mushrooms in it. The well-browned roasted potatoes on the side are just what this sort of highly flavored dish needs.

Surprisingly, medallions of filet mignon are more subdued than the veal: three ultra-tender cylinders of beef topped with well-browned onions. Between them lies a ridge of garlicky mashed potatoes sprinkled with long, toasted strips of elephant garlic.

Rotisserie leg of lamb consists of generous slices of lamb with a big mound of pureed white beans, topped with a hash of intense black olives. On the side is some ratatouille, the Provencal eggplant-and-tomato-stew, crunchy and heavily flavored with garlic.

Ahi tuna gets a fairly obvious Mediterranean treatment--tomato, garlic and Nicoise olives, with basmati rice on the side. Roasted baby lotte is mild and sweet, and the creamy cilantro rice is virtually a cilantro risotto.

Most entrees come with grilled or roasted vegetables. Roasted pork tenderloin is more in the Midwestern vein, with its ginger-flavored applesauce, side of spinach and sweetened--or rather, sweet-and-soured--purees, one of sweet potatoes, the other of beets spiked with orange.

Much the same menu is served at lunch, with the addition of a couple of sandwiches. The grilled Angus burger (choice of Cheddar, Gruyere or blue cheese) is a middling-thick patty on a bun from Cafe Morpheus’ own bakery. There are also three pizzas, but the one I had went a little overboard on the pesto and could have distributed the prosciutto a bit more evenly.

The desserts run to traditional American favorites like berry pie and carrot cake, but they also include the only really successful chocolate bread pudding I’ve ever had, made from brioche and chocolate brownies. And the caramel-custard Napoleon is unprecedentedly understated in the Napoleon department--just a few flaky sheets of filo here and there--but loud with caramel sauce and rich, butterscotchy custard filling.

Cafe Morpheus attracts people who look like they have cellular phones in their pockets, just as Asylum did, but this time around it’s not relying on its fashionableness or even its looks. Instead, it’s taking serious aim at L.A.’s taste for hearty Mediterranean food. And hitting the mark nearly all the time, too.

Cafe Morpheus Bistro and Bakery, 180 N. Robertson Blvd., Beverly Hills; (310) 657-0527. Full bar. Valet parking. Breakfast, lunch and dinner served Monday through Friday, brunch and dinner on Saturday. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $31-$70.